


Wild Wood, Idle Eyes

by blesser



Series: Leng T'che (Death by a Thousand Cuts) [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A Serial Killers Guide To Caretaking, Cold Weather, Day drinking, Insomnia, M/M, Murder Family Vibes, Playing House, Sexual Tension, Sweaters, Talking In The Dark, The Morning After Nothing, Touch-Starved, Unapologetic Bed Sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9577847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blesser/pseuds/blesser
Summary: Will shrugs. He puts a piece of line between sharp white teeth and bites till it snaps instead of answering right away."This is the first one I ever learnt. The universal knot. It is good for fishing in the dark."Hannibal, who knows a lot about killing in the dark but not much about knots and not nearly enough about Will, keeps his mouth shut.***And like the thickest moss you have grown on me / just more proof I have been static for too long / forest fire / it is the worst parts of you I admire





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Wildwood by Keaton Henson

"They probably think we’re sleeping together," Will says tiredly.

 _Tiredly_. Implying he has dedicated prior time to thinking about it. Options exhausted, mind wandered...

"This definitely isn't sleep."

"No, but it is still better than whatever my body seems to constitute as 'sleep' these days," Will spits out the word _-sleep-_ like it is a dirty word, the enemy.

Unnoticed, Hannibal's hands, another enemy, twitch against the scratchy down of the blanket beneath them.

 

**

 

"What do you feel, when you can't sleep?" Hannibal asks softly, because this is what he is good at, these words are what he trusts himself with.

"Tired," Will bites out.

"I don't believe you."

Another soundless shift in the dark and Hannibal imagines he can feel the presence of the body next to him swell and shrink with a tempestuous sigh.

"Fine," he can almost _see_ Will chewing his lip, the unwinnable fight of physically keeping the words in and biting confessions back into his own mouth, "I suppose," he succumbs, as always, to the conversation in the way others succumb to the pull of sleep, "I feel- restless, quite simply restless."

"And what do you do?"

Somehow, 'sweating and thrashing' doesn't feel like the appropriate answer, so instead Will whistles a breath between his teeth and looks around the blackness, trying to place where everything is in the room.

"Read I guess? On better nights. Check the locks on the bad ones, maybe make some notes, tie some flies. Sometimes I will tie knots over and over, end up coming to in the morning with a headache and bleeding fingers."

"It helps then?"

"If 'help' means achieving the same end goal but with irritating and painfully neurotic tendencies? Then sure, it helps."

"Do you fish, at night?"

"Sometimes. But never unplanned, never..." a self conscious pause, "... not in that state. I've seen enough big, bloated, ugly corpses pulled out of water to never mix instability and my proximity to it. Not large bodies of it, at least, although I've taken the odd midnight shower I suppose."

Hannibal chews this speech over.

"Large bodies and large bodies. Poetic."

"Sure that's the word for it."

"Don't sleep fish? Careful, Will, that is almost decent self advice for one so 'unstable'," Hannibal tries to let a smile bleed into his voice.

"Yeah well, I've got a half decent therapist I guess."

They listen to the nothingness of the night, almost surprised when the inevitable crackle of the patrol car radio interrupts the silence. The light show on the porch indicates a change of watch. Hannibal correctly assumes that Will feels conflictingly safe and offended.

"You really should try to sleep Will," Hannibal says regretfully, not wanting it to ever be true morning, to end. Not when there is something so calm yet ritualistic about it. Honestly, he is almost enjoying himself. Strike almost.

"I should," Will's voice struggles against a yawn, losing and breaking on the second syllable, "and yet, I have nearly discovered the meaning of life."

Hannibal laughs, taken by surprise and smothering the noise of it into the mound of comforter bunched up about his shoulder. It turns out Will's yawn was catching and Hannibal inhales the woody, sandlewood scent of the pillow smushed against his face.

"It is getting light out," Hannibal murmurs, hushed, "there must be some comfort in reaching morning with no bleeding fingers or nightmares clinging to you."

Hannibal tries to offer comfort but is himself torn, part worried to close his eyes as he feels the crooked finger of sleep curling and part apprehensive of looking anywhere but straight up at the pattern he can just discern on the ceiling.

Is he scared to turn lest he finds his nighttime conversation partner an empty space in the bed? It's a lie to say it hasn't happened before.

Will makes the decision for him by raising an arm, presumably to cover his own face with his hand judging by the muffled quality of his voice.

The movement is a bird flapping in Hannibal's peripheral.

A confirmation of a tangible presence.

"Would you like me to make you some coffee?"

Will props himself up onto his elbows, blinking about the room as though he didn't expect it to be there.

"I'd actually rather like it if you could get me so drunk I can't feel my fingers anymore."

There are about thirty things, off the top of his under-slept, over-charged mind that Hannibal could say to that. But he has found, with Will, that following an instruction is much less tiring than challenging it with wordy investigation of its origin.

Usually.

The bed-sofa-sofa-bed has springs that creak gently as he moves, the noise of metal against metal breaks the spell of still morning that even their voices couldn't shatter before.

"I'm coming back," Hannibal says, unnecessary, too loudly.

Will, probably, nods in the darkness.

 

**

 

He manages, gracefully, not to slip on the driveway; which _really_ could do with salting in this weather.

"Milk run," Hannibal says to the federal agents. It feels like a terrible alibi, which seems ironic.

In timely and unfortunate fashion, the bottles clink together in the paper bag, sounding nothing at all like milk, which of course they aren't. 

Officer Rude scoffs loudly and peers into the paper bag and it's contents, which are on the miniature and alcoholic side. He leers peculiarly and graces Hannibal with a raised eyebrow of judgement. The look is one hundred percent like that of an admonishing parent, as if slipping free of federal protection to make a snowy, six-am whiskey run is a groundable, laughable offence. Maybe it is.

The stoic partner looks miserable and cold, almost sad not to be following Hannibal and the holy chink of booze into the house. Feeling uncharacteristically charitable on the inside,  Hannibal turns cobra-fast and tosses a miniature into the air. Officer Rude catches it in blue fingers and Officer Stoic, with a genuine hat tip, solemnly says: "Doctor."

"Gentlemen."

He thinks about the irony of considering ending someone's life for making too much noise on a porch swing and then, not two hours later, buying them a drink. Hannibal's brain is human partnership backwards.

"Cheers," Hannibal shifts the noisy paper bag under his arm in order to get a hand on the door. Out of courtesy and a pinch of genuine self preservation, he calls Will's name and announces his entrance before simply barging in. Hannibal hears Will's muffled response and chooses to believe he misheard the answering _"yeah, whatever"._

Probably due to the sheer boredom, time-stopping quality of being under -what is essentially- house arrest, everyone seems to be resuming their previous state from the night before. Hannibal has an overwhelmingly nostalgic feeling as he takes in the sight of the living room. If one can have nostalgia for something which took place only yesterday that is.

The space heaters are blaring and with good reason. Despite being only early winter there is the suggestion of snow on Hannibal's shoes which melt as soon as he steps across the threshold.

Abigail is back on the floor as though last night never happened and nobody even went to bed. Or sofa-bed. Winston is laying on his side lazily with Abigail pressed up against his belly, she is flicking through a dustjacket-less book with a neutral expression, her hair is shower damp and she looks... content if not peaceful.

"Good morning," sidestepping a precariously curled mound of dog and closing the door quickly, so as not to let the heat out, Hannibal peers over a low wooden ikea unit and spots Will.

"Assuming safety positions?" Hannibal asks good-naturedly, "must have missed the sirens."

"We are cowering in fear from furious, bereaved, middle aged women armed with stones, not a nuclear bomb," Will's voice scoffs from the floor, and then he mumbles something that sounds a lot like, " _preposterous_."

Hannibal isn't going to argue over the top of furniture, not when Will is sleep deprived and slouched in the floor like a child begrudging their quiet time.

"Well I was trying to nap, but I couldn't upstairs," Abigail frowns at her book, "your attic is very sad, Will."

"We could have tried some sleep therapy," Hannibal, somehow the mediator, suggests.

"I thought I heard voices last night. Was that you trying sleep therapy?"

Will looks at Hannibal and then back to the mess on the floor quickly. It is an angled, intimate look and very out of character.

Hannibal looks around for a chair then feels immediately overwhelmed by the choices.

_Am I your therapist, or are we simply having conversations?_

_Yes, I think, is the answer to that._

"Yes," Will answers.

"It didn't work," Abigail turns a page, "you look terrible."

Will smiles like a sleepy tiger, drowsy and vicious.

"There are many ailments for insomnia," sounding disturbingly like a textbook-on-tape, Hannibal lowers himself into a lumpy arm chair, "herbal tea, relaxants, a hot bath..."

His chosen seat offers a good view over the field out the window as well as the sofa bed and as he speaks he notes that the sheets and comforters are pulled back hospital-corner tight.

Did he kick them off as he left this morning, casually, familiarly?

"I don't have a bath," Will says mildly, opening a box and rifling nonchalantly through it.

Hannibal; master of poker faces, of deniability and unshakeably, feels his jaw hit the floor.

He cannot believe this. He has seen Will blood soaked, close to tears in teeth clenching pain, mentally absent and utterly ruined and yet this is the first time Hannibal has ever felt sorry for him.

 _You cannot invite your not-quite-patients round for baths,_ _Hannibal,_ tuts a voice that sounds a lot like his own therapist.

"Another well prescribed and sworn by cure," Hannibal says breezily, rising once more with the cheap chinking of glass as his soundtrack, "a good stiff drink."

He winks at Abigail, who looks comfortable and surprisingly rested despite her protests to the opposite, feet tucked under herself and very small amongst the legs of chairs and side tables.

Alice in Wonderland, Abigail in Wolf Trap.

The kitchen is well stocked with surprisingly nice decanters, whisky tumblers and even a stack of ice trays. Hannibal would bet there is more cupboard space taken up by glassware here than by edible food. He sets the groceries down on the side. Because he is a weak man, Hannibal actually did get some milk. He places the carton and some cheese, bananas and bacon in the fridge and leaves a dozen eggs and the same again of late season clementines on the counter.

Hannibal lifts one of the bottle of cheap, gas station liquor out of the bag and is amazed that this _-this-_ is the first moment he feels his doctorate blanche in shame. A crystal cut set of glasses seems inappropriate before eight in the morning, so instead Hannibal gathers up three mugs in one hand, bottle in the other and heads back into the main room.

"This is a Grinner," Will is saying, unsmiling and using his hands which is the way he says everything.

"Oh," Abigail twines the line absently and without purpose.

She is probably thinking about leering faces, unhinged laughter, cheeks cut ear to ear in bloody, grinning and eternal smiles.

She's not the only one.

"Why choose that one," she tips her head in the direction of a visible, heavy looking book called 101 Knots to Master on the shelf, "over the other hundred?"

Will shrugs. He puts a piece of line between sharp white teeth and bites till it snaps instead of answering right away.

"This is the first one I ever learnt. The universal knot. It is good for fishing in the dark."

Hannibal, who knows a lot about killing in the dark but not much about knots and not nearly enough about Will, keeps his mouth shut.

"I'll bet you a sip of that whisky that isn't true," Abigail challenges.

Will shows his amused shock with his eyebrows, mouth still frowning. Abigail clearly takes this as an acquiescence to the wager and barrels on.

"I bet you learnt to tie your shoelaces before you learnt that," she looks triumphant even before Will, who's hands have stopped moving, emits an impressed laugh, a short and dusty thing.

Moving quickly but quietly so as not to unbalance the odd unfolding moment, Hannibal leans forward in the chair and passes the bottle across to Abigail's victoriously outstretched hand. He follows up this bad decision with a worse one and passes a mug too. Good for shock, his doctor brain reasons half-heartedly.

Will won't be settled until Abigail has this down and they spent an increasingly slurry hour spinning webs for tarantulas between their fingers. Eventually Abigail woops like she scored a touch down and holds her forefinger sky high, spinning the thread around like a lasso. The knot holds fast and so does Will's smile. He is still doing it as he ambles through to the kitchen, knees knocking Hannibal's on the way past, apology muttered and a dimple in his cheek.

It is infectious and Hannibal doesn't even flinch when Will calls something about lunch over his shoulder and the unmistakable, dull thunk of frozen meat hits the countertop.

 

**

 

Jack comes by after lunch and talks to Will through the screen door. Abigail and Hannibal lurk at the back of the house like secret things and say nothing, taking the last sips of their cool tea. At last the gravel and snow crunches all the way down the drive, loud to quiet to nothing at all. Nothing but the trees running fingers against the roof and the final creak of the door closing.

"Fresh air?" Will asks, coming to stand at the top of the little steps to the kitchen, hands in his pockets.

He looks like a man proposing marriage, not just a walk and Hannibal wonders if a casual social invitation perhaps carries just as much weight and apprehension.

Abigail slides off the breakfast bar and looks bright eyed for the first time in hours and Will seems to take this as answer. The dogs do too. Every soul in the house is ready to follow Will out, out into that vast, chilly freedom. He says nothing though, just turns to a coat rack and starts pulling at garments and tangles of wool. Hannibal listens to Abigail's harmless critique of Will's outdoor attire, but turns away to the sink where pans and dishes teeter.

"I suppose it is too much to ask for marigolds?" Hannibal asks, flipping the hot tap on.

Will stops with one foot half in a shoe, hopping on one leg in the archway. He frowns at the rising soap suds.

"You aren't coming?" he says, on the uninterested side of petulant.

"I don't think Christopher Schafer intended this as forest rambling wear," Hannibal half smiles, "in case you haven't noticed, I'm wearing the half shed tuxedo I slept in."

"I noticed the half that I tripped over on the way out of bed this morning," Will says without heat, "you know for a meticulous control freak you sure are a messy undresser."

Hannibal inclines his head in the direction of the cutlery drawer where every knife and spoon is nestled alongside and pointing in the same direction.

"For a messy dresser you sure are a control freak."

"Fair play."

Hannibal reaches around at the counter and picks up the neatly stacked but dirty pans. Frozen chicken and shrimps or not, it was a damn good paella.

"Especially in the kitchen, Will. That was excellent by the way, and this won't take long to clean up," he smiles politely, "it is no trouble."

Will moves closer and if anything, further from the door.

"Really," Hannibal grips a wooden spoon under the water, which is far too hot on his skin, "enjoy your walk."

He moves decisively, reaching to the adjacent counter for a pan in an attempt to shock the situation into motion. It only makes Will more urgent however.

"You don't have-" Will puts a brave hand out onto Hannibal's wrist and his fingertips skitter on the soap slick skin.

When Abigail clears her throat, suddenly behind them, it is too much. The kitchen floor, the sound out of her throat, their hands wet and frantic...

Hannibal had said exactly nothing in that moment but he does now, can now.

"Will."

Abigail looks between then and raises her eyebrows, face sullen but questioning.

"Well" she says, shrugging out of the big, borrowed khaki coat, "do you have a dish towel or what?"

 

**

 

"There's a lighthouse for sale out in the bay."

"You ever think about it?" Abigail pushes her borrowed hat up off of her brow impatiently.

Will shrugs and ducks to pick up a slim branch on the path, he hits it against passing trees like a small child.

“Seems lonely.”

Abigail looks pointedly out across the emptily vast, white dusted field to the right. The overnight snow didn’t settle, despite the cold. Instead, after yesterday’s torrential rain showers everything is just _wet_ today. Abigail has a hole in one shoe, her sock is wet and the threat or promise of snow is hanging over them.

“Right,” a wry smile tugs at Will’s face, “besides, no dogs on a lighthouse.”

“No people either,” Abigail admits.

“People aren’t so bad,” Will says, voice muffled by the way he is breathing into cupped hands, “it’s everything they bring with them, like the dogs tracking in mud all over the carpet of the mind.”

Abigail says nothing, watching instead the clouds of breath around his hands. It looks like smoke curling out from his gloved fingers. Ridiculously, she tries to picture Will lighting a cigarette, talking to more than one person at a time, drinking something other than sad, single malts at home. A beer maybe? In a bar with people, stuck in traffic, choosing a song on the radio and turning it up…

It is hard to picture, like trying to see Wolf Trap in anything but this perpetual state of winter.

They walk in a looping track past a thicket of trees which suddenly takes the house, the barn and the car in the driveway completely out of sight. The trees are bare branched but still thick and obscuring.

_A big dark forest, we can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. Oh no!_

“Are you ok?”

“Fine,” Abigail says on automatic, the answer given to every one of the nurses and therapists and parade of law officials, social services, faux-concerned journalist.

“Fine,” Will scoffs, “well my head feels like it is about to explode.”

“Concussion?”

“Mild to moderate, light sensitivity to be expected.”

“Maybe you should go back inside.”

“And leave you to the coyotes and wild bears? I don’t think so. My custody record with you is already patchy.”

Custody record, it makes her sound like a piece of evidence.

As if on cue, conjured up by Abigail’s ungenerous but vehemently unhappy brain, a figure appears at the end of the treeline. Just another responsible party appearing to take charge of her. _Never break the chain of custody or it’s all inadmissible._ It’s a wonder the kid gloves everybody is using with her are metaphorical and not actual blue, crime scene issue standards.

“Abigail,” Hannibal calls and then, in a broader, questioning tone, “how are you feeling?”

“Fine. A bit worn. I had too much sleep last night,” she breezes.

“Sounds like a dream.”

Will hurls the stick casually into the treeline.

“Is that my sweater?” he asks accusatorily as they draw nearer.

They all look down at Hannibal, who does appear to be wearing a rather ugly, very Will-like sweater, Abigail can even see the dog hair strewn trough the cable knit.

“What would you say if I said I felt left out?”

“I would say I don’t enjoy feeling like a hostage in my own home.”

“We aren’t technically in your home Will,” Hannibal spreads his arms to indicate the surroundings, an unfortunate movement which only seems to serve to display more of the stolen item.

“You are both, technically wearing my clothes however,” Will scowls at the sky.

A tree above them sloughs a great load of slush onto the ground in a mini waterfall missing all of them barely.

“Will has a headache,” Abigail stage whispers.

 

**

 

“What are you going to do, sit there and watch me sleep?” Will barks out a hollow, too loud laugh.

“No. I am going to sit here and read,” Hannibal waves a book for emphasis, “until I too, probably, fall asleep.”

“Right.”

Will looks at the back of his eyelids, or is it the ceiling? The black is shot through with streaks and bursts of light, images of nothingness that have a thousand changing shapes. He sighs long and low.

“I can’t turn my brain off around you,” he whispers involuntarily, moodily, eyes scrunched tight so he can trust they are closed.

There is a measured breath, the sound of leather creaking and a heavy book finding itself set on a table.

“That’s good to hear, I probably wouldn’t find you nearly as interesting with a turned off brain.”

Will burrows under the covers, feeling like the howling fox from the night before, wild and screaming in the snow banks. He puts his hand over his eyes and in doing so nudges the tip of his own numb nose, he can feel the draft from the windows in his _bones_.

“…selfish of you,” he finds himself muttering into a mouthful of comforter. 

Suddenly there is a weight on him, another blanket, a dip in the bed and a hand on him before Will can even put the lid back on his thoughts. Hannibal has pulled what might be a rug right up under Will’s chin, letting his hand move from jaw to crown as if this isn’t pretty much the first time they have touched each other alone outside of an initial-meet handshake or holding a girls throat muscles together.

He pushes against Will’s temple in a parody of a massage, just once, and his touch is white flame, ice, steel knives on his skin that he pushes helplessly up into, just once. Will has never felt less like a person than when he is actually being treating like one.

Hannibal skirts the tip of one finger around the peeling away butterfly stitches on his forehead and Will can feel the soft, scratchy woollen cuff of his own sweater against his skin.

“Am I bleeding?”

“No,” Hannibal’s voice and hand withdraws into the black, “you are absolutely fine.”

Will wants to laugh, but it sounds too convincing for once.

"Will?"

"Mmm?"

He drifts.

"Where do you keep the salt? Will, it's going to freeze overnight."

_Whiskey, marigolds, sweaters, salt..._

Honestly, Will couldn't locate his elbow in this state.

"In the shaker," he slurs, like a regular comedian, "on the table."

He hears the wind shake the windows and an amused, sigh of a laugh. Both sounds seem close to him and so Will surrenders and sleep pulls him under like a stone dropped through a frozen lake surface.

He plummets and ricochets for a bit, but the sound of paper rustling is as rhythmic as a clock and he imagines a warm hand stopping his teeth from chattering and holding his heavy head still for a moment and it is enough just to be held down and steady. Enough just to be pulled out of the thicket, the snowbank, the lonely lighthouse of his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes it is a Going On A Bear Hunt reference


End file.
